Monorail would glide past queues on A40

Sir – It was with interest that I read John Hook’s suggestion of a cable car in order to help alleviate the congestion problems on the A40 (Gazette, May 14).

My alternative proposal would be for the construction of a monorail of the type currently in use in many cities of the world including Sydney, Mumbai and Las Vegas.

The track would be supported on stanchions regularly-spaced, meaning the footprint required would be minimal and could easily utilise the existing space on one side of the road.

Initial investment would be, in my opinion, cost-effective when compared to other proposals such as reinstating railway lines (possibly reliant on compulsory purchase of land) or upgrading the existing road to dual carriageway (which would certainly create bottlenecks).

This type of system also eliminates the need to re-engineer existing road junctions.

Electrically-powered (from suitable ‘green’ energy sources) carriages would rapidly transport significant numbers of commuters to and from Oxford in speed and comfort.

In my view, the visual impact on the environment of such a system would be reasonably low if care were taken at the design stage.

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Terminals would be built for passengers to embark/disembark at Witney and Pear Tree park-and-ride, with additional platforms at Eynsham and possibly Cassington.

The advantage of using the park-and-ride at Pear Tree is fairly obvious, with bus connections into the city centre and an area could also easily be created to store cycles for (more active) commuters to complete their journey.

Having seen innovative solutions employed elsewhere around the world, it frustrates me that our infrastructure capacity issues cannot be solved by thinking outside of the box a little more often.

Bold, radical thinking is sometimes required to address such issues as the A40 nightmare.